Shadowheart, Dark JusticiarShadowheart, Dark Justiciar | Art by Cristi Balanescu; Inspiring LeaderInspiring Leader | Art by Stephen Stark

Minthara, Merciless SoulMinthara, Merciless Soul | Art by Evyn Fong; Astarion, the DecadentAstarion, the Decadent | Art by Ben Hill

Hello, fellow brewer, and welcome back to Brew For Your Buck, where we swap out the top 10 most expensive cards in a deck with 10 budget cards that add a unique twist. There’s been a lot of hype around a certain video game franchise coming to Magic soon, but this week we’re paying tribute to one of my favorites: Baldur’s Gate 3. 

I was late to the party with this game, but I’ve been hooked as soon as I got off that Nautiloid. The final big patch was released a few weeks ago, with a bunch of new awesome content. Of course, Commander Legends: Battle of Baldur’s Gate features many of the characters in the game, and when I got looking, I realized that Orzhov () makes for a perfect combination to hot swap commanders. It's also my favorite color combination, so win-win.

If you haven’t seen one of my hot swap articles before, it’s where we include multiple commanders and you can decide which one will head your deck at the start of the game and just shuffle in the others. With a budget package that supports all three, you get multiple decks out of the same 100 cards. 

Without further ado, let’s roll for initiative and check out our hot swapping commanders:

Looking at the three of them, Minthara pumps all of our creatures, Shadowheart gives us a sac outlet and card draw option, (along with Inspiring LeaderInspiring Leader to pump up the card draw), and Astarion can increase the effectiveness of a go-wide strategy by doubling up life loss. Given all that, and our color combination, it’s probably not shocking that we’re going for a tokens/aristocrats theme. I used Minthara’s average list to pull from, which came in at $178.01, so let’s look at the top ten for removal:

Total Value of Cuts: $110.63

Only two lands from the original list deserve a cut: Godless ShrineGodless Shrine and Vault of ChampionsVault of Champions. Doing so leads to an additional $28.69 in savings, for a total of $139.32.

When I was building this deck I noticed it had a lot of overlap with the FelisaFelisa deck tech I did a few articles ago. The “piñata” strategy and cards like Elenda's HierophantElenda's Hierophant can definitely work here, so check out that article if you want to see similar suggestions, but I’m going to aim to include some different cards this time around.

Additions

Exponential Power

To kick things off, we have Threefold ThunderhulkThreefold Thunderhulk ($0.62). Seven mana is expensive, but it does everything we want. Similar to Jacked RabbitJacked Rabbit which is already in the deck, it makes tokens to an amount equal to its power, so it benefits greatly from both Minthara or Inspiring Leader in the command zone, better still if you've got both on the battlefield. It also comes with a sac outlet to trigger any of our aristocrats synergies.

Ghoulcaller GisaGhoulcaller Gisa ($2.25) is in the same school of thought. Using your buffed creatures to make more buffed creatures is exactly what this deck wants to do, making Gisa a must-kill threat for your opponents.

Angelic Sell-SwordAngelic Sell-Sword ($0.21) allows all of our nontoken creatures to bring a friend with them, and that friend gives us some extra synergy with all of the power-matters cards in the deck. We even get a little card draw as a bonus.

Finally, Moorland RescuerMoorland Rescuer ($0.18) is an amazing recursion piece in a deck looking to stack the power of its creatures and has plenty of sacrifice outlets. It's not out of the realm of possibility that this brings back every creature in your graveyard when it dies. It's just too bad it can't be repeated!

Token "Upgrades"

Our next cards allow us to “upgrade” all the tokens we make into much more powerful threats. Angelic AberrationAngelic Aberration ($0.31) takes small tokens (regardless of their current power and toughness) and turns them into massive flying threats, enabling an easy one-turn kill regardless which commander is on the battlefield.

Promise of AclazotzPromise of Aclazotz ($0.12) trades the burst of power with an inexorable stream of tokens, and if you stack the triggers right, can trigger Minthara to get more experience counters. Use the Foul Rebirth half to get the party started with a 4/3 flying Vampire Demon.

In a similar vein, Dreadhorde InvasionDreadhorde Invasion ($0.22) gives us a token each turn, with a pretty substantial bonus when that token (or any Zombie token) attacks with high power. BitterblossomBitterblossom?! Who needs it?

Jack of All Trades

The last three cards round out the budget package by being useful regardless of who's heading the deck. The new Anafenza, Unyielding LineageAnafenza, Unyielding Lineage give us the option for more tokens or more power. The flexibility is helpful depending on what we need at the moment. Flashing her in in response to a board wipe makes for some good insurance as well.

Distinguished ConjurerDistinguished Conjurer ($0.09) is not the "best" soul sister we could add, but the blinking ability synergizes with some other cards in the deck in addition to granting us quite a bit of incidental lifegain.

Lastly, a deck like this wouldn't be complete without an extra Blood ArtistBlood Artist effect. I went with Zulaport CutthroatZulaport Cutthroat ($1.01), since we already had ElasElas, put you could pick your poison with any similar card.

Wrap Up & Savings

Let's see what we saved:

Three(-ish) decks for under $50! Nice! I did a little extra tweaking to make the mana base more functional, including cutting some lackluster creatures that were only in there to proliferate. Good with Minthara, but not necessarily the other commanders. We also picked up Starlit SanctumStarlit Sanctum as a very unique land, which can theoretically finish off opponents with the right set up!

So what do you think? I'm always open to suggestions and feedback in the comments. Do you like the hot swap articles for prefer a more traditional one? Or just drop your craziest Baldur's Gate 3 build that you want to show off. I'm looking forward to reading all of it, and I'll see you next time when we brew for your buck!

If you want to send your personal deck through the Brew For Your Buck  process, send an email to [email protected] with an Archidekt link and a few sentences about what your goals for the deck are, and your deck could be featured in a future article!

Please note: card prices listed in this article are accurate at the time of writing, but prices can vary over time and between locations.